The Year In Postcards

  • December 9, 2018

I traveled a lot this year and sent many postcards. Happily I received many as well, from all over the world!

As you know I have a particularly love of strange postcards, and happily sent and received many of them as well:

These are just a sample of course. I always send KLS/myself lots of cards when I travel, and between them and the ones you sent me I reckon there must have been nearly 100 arriving this year! ?

That’s a wooden card, which made it intact from Australia when I was there in January. Interestingly it only cost the same as a normal card to mail.

Speaking of stamps:

You may have not noticed, but I put a lot of effort into the stamps I put on cards. Specifically I try not to repeat stamps where possible. Watch for this the next you get cards from me. This past year it meant a massive variety of stamps and as usual Australia didn’t disappoint with their pretty and varied selection.

Of course in the name of fun I’ll sometimes repeat stamps:

This year I also took my postcard art to a new level, especially during the days in Hawaii where the hurricane shut everything down:

Many of you received original art this year as well. I hope you treasure it 🙂

Of course some of you reciprocated demonstrating talent that frankly shames mine:

Or created ‘modern art’ using other means:

No summary of 2018 in postcards could be complete without mentioning the dozen or so different Nessie’s I painted on cards sent from Scotland. It took ages but I was very happy with what I achieved…

In a few weeks I’ll be in Oz again, and then very shortly thereafter in Japan. In other words next years cards aren’t too far away. Look forward to them 🙂

  • Posted in Art
  • Robert

Deathtrap Dungeon

  • December 2, 2018

That’s Deathtrap Dungeon, the 6th Fighting Fantasy book that was published way back in 1984. It’s a classic title, one of the most famous books in the range, and has inspired countless other gamebooks and video games.

Here’s some more editions from my collection:

Clockwise from top left they are the 2017 Scholastic version, the 1984 Dell USA version, the 2009 Wizard version and the 2002 Wizard version.

And here’s another version:

The above has been one of my ‘Holy Grail’ gamebooks for years. It was published in 2009 by Hobby Japan, and as you can see it’s definitely not like the others.

It’s still Deathtrap Dungeon, although obviously translated into Japanese. This isn’t the first Japanese version either, since FF books were published there during their original run too. But in 2009 Hobby Japan gave the books a distinctive anime makeover with a short-lived reprint series.

Whereas in FF books you are the hero, and therefore the player character is rarely described and even less commonly named, in this edition the player character is this adventuress named ‘Philia’ (according to my translation software). She still challenges Baron Sukumvit’s evil Deathtrap Dungeon for fame and fortune, but her experience is distinctly different from the one I first had in 1984.

For instance here’s the ninja I encountered in the original version:

And here’s Philia’s ninja opponent:

What about the iconic Manticore? Whereas originally it was the focus of the art during its encounter, now it seems to be photobombing a Philia selfie:

The fighting hobgoblins:

What about the disturbing (to my 12-year old self in ’84) one-handed man:

There are other cases where opponents switch gender (a crazy old man becomes a young witch etc.) but most of the illustrated sections are actually new and don’t correspond to the old ones.

I can’t read Japanese, so I can’t determine if the text itself changes. But it must if only slightly to accommodate the gender switch of some of the encounters? I wonder if it’s still in the first person though, or if Philia is directly referenced in the text?

As for the makeover, it’s undoubtedly because Hobby Japan was trying to market these to otaku in the wake of the success of the Queens Blade series. The all-new art is possibly due to the original art becoming pricey to license since the artist (Iain McCaig) had become quite famous in the intervening years (he designed Darth Maul for instance).

As best I can tell, there were three books in this reprint series. Deathtrap Dungeon is #1, I also have #3:

And #2 was House of Hell, advertised here in my copy of Deathtrap:

As I suggested, these are both difficult to find now and pricey when you do. My Deathtrap cost me $40 and took three months to arrive from Japan. One day I hope to get House of Hell, but I’m not sure it’s worth $50+ to me. Further books in the same series exist, but don’t seem to be FF titles (for instance one is an AD&D gamebook (?) based in the ‘Eberron’ game world).

As a curiosity though it’s lovely, and I’m extremely pleased I finally own it 🙂

(I obtained a few other gamebook curiosities this year. Maybe I’ll do a future post on them…)

Crafting Again

  • November 24, 2018

I made another craft kit, the biggest I’ve done so far:

What a massive box!!! Here’s what’s inside:

Styrofoam, wood, bits of plastic and this mysterious bag of metal fasteners:

The wooden pieces were heavy and made every step of assembly somewhat difficult. But as a modern flat-packed kit the pieces went together with the usual innovative fasteners:

First the sides were prepared, including attaching metal rails. The screws used here were short and flat-faced, and required a lot of force to drive in, but I was happy to see the rails attached well and (importantly) parallel:

Next the sides were attached with nailed and screwed backplates. Not a trivial step, this one:

The cabinet was completed with a long piece attached using double hinges, of all things. This was a tricky step since it was challenging to get it correctly aligned:

The overhang there is for the piece to tilt slightly backwards whilst standing. This is no doubt for safety reasons.

I took few photos of the assembly of the drawers, but it was time consuming and precise:

After about 3 hours my crafting was complete, and our new chest of drawers was ready for use:

It’s very sturdy, quite lovely, and although exhausting to assemble is good value for $99 (or $80 if you buy online).

As a bonus I immediately made a second craft kit, which was even bigger! But it only took about twenty minutes before our new storage unit was complete as well: